Chapter 8 notes

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School

University of Toronto St. George

Department

Psychology

Course

PSY100H1

Professor

Michael Inzlicht

Semester

Winter

Description

Chapter 8: Thinking and Intelligence Intelligence: a combination of being able to learn quickly, make reasonable decisions, and adapt to diverse challenges -dread risks: born of uncommon events, can have a profound impact on reasoning and decision making -people who are better at using info are intelligent -we develop rules for making fast decisions -snap judgements have important consequences How does the mind represent information? -cognition: thinking or representing info -2 types of representations (both form the basis of human thought, intelligence and ability to solve complex problems of everyday life): Analogical Representations o Have some characteristics of actual objects o Example: maps reflecting the physical layout of geography or family trees indicating the degree of relationship between relatives Symbolic Representations (abstract) o Are words or ideas o Example: knowing that the word violin stands for musical object ***there is very little correspondence between what a violin looks like or sounds like and the letters that make up the word violin*** Mental images are analogical representations -Roger Shepard and colleagues (1970) Participants were to view letters and numbers and to determine whether the given object was in its normal orientation or was a mirror image (figure 8.1: Mental Rotation pg.299) the time it takes to determine whether the R is normal or a mirror image increases with the amount of rotation away from the upright letter -Kosslyn and others have shown that visual imagery is associated with activity in perception-related areas of the brain (primary visual cortex). These areas are responsible for providing spatial aspects of analogical visual imagery (ex: sixe and shape) -Kosslyn and colleagues found in a brain imaging study that participants asked to recall images they had just memorized demonstrated that analogical representations activate the primary visual cortex 1 www.notesolution.com